#because of the world they live in and thg isn't a romance obviously while the popular newer books im thinking of are marketed as romance so

[cmonangel]

okay so i finally read a ballad of songbirds and snakes which led to me rereading the hunger games trilogy over the past week (SO GOOD i could make a whole other post) but then i thought it would be a good idea to watch the movies but then literally started sobbing from the beginning and started again every time single time they showed rue before the games even started or anything

[miharuhebinata]

ok i can't stop thinking about thg lately so here goes. here are my spiciest takes on the series.

- like i said, mockingjay isn't a bad book. i'd definitely say it's my least favorite of the three, but that doesn't mean it's bad. i just happen to like the other two better (for me it goes catching fire, thg, then mockingjay. although i can't imagine that itself is a very unpopular opinion sjdbsjd)

- prim's death makes me extremely sad, but i understand why it happened. i especially don't believe that her death rendered katniss' whole journey/character arc throughout the series completely pointless.

- i have some complex feelings about gale. while i used to be one of those "ugh gale is just the worst, i'm so glad katniss picked peeta over him 💁‍♀️" people -- now that i'm not a dumbass teenager anymore, i recognize that gale is not that bad & in fact, i actually really like him. or rather, i like his potential. as it is, i feel as if he is very underutilized in all three books & is mostly used as a prop for the love triangle. i would've loved to see more of his & katniss' friendship without the whole will-they-won't-they, unrequited love dynamic making things so weird & confusing between them. not to say that i hate the fact that gale was in love with her; i actually really like the love triangle, specifically because it adds a lot of layers to the whole fake romance & katniss struggling to figure out what she really wants for her future, despite the fact the capitol gives her no real choice in the matter. but idk, i just think we didn't get to see enough of their actual friendship to really make it feel as if gale was a completely separate character independent of the love triangle.

- finnick is an interesting character, but honestly it doesn't really upset me that much that he was killed off?? of course it's sad that he didn't get to live in peace after everything president snow put him through, but i don't think of his tragic end as bad writing or anything like that.

- this is gonna get long but THE REASON KATNISS ALWAYS SAID SHE DIDN'T WANT CHILDREN IS BECAUSE OF THE THREAT OF THE HUNGER GAMES, NOT BECAUSE SHE GENUINELY NEVER WANTED TO BE A MOTHER. granted i don't think she ever said that outright (at least not that i can remember), but that is very much how i interpreted it, especially given the fact that she is shown to be very motherly at times. like, it's not as if she hates children or just simply doesn't know how to take care of them; & yes this is mostly due to the fact she was forced to take on a parental role at a very young age, & obviously that was very traumatic for her. but just because she clearly has baggage when it comes to the thought of having children, that doesn't mean she didn't want them. & it especially doesn't mean peeta manipulated her into it ?? i genuinely will never understand why people think peeta would ever do that to her. like, the capitol is literally gone by the end of the series; katniss would've had no reason to feel coerced into having children with peeta, even if he was literally sobbing & begging her on his knees, unless she ultimately decided she wanted kids too lol. not to mention some people act like things would've been different if she'd picked gale but like, gale wanted kids too???? he literally said in the very first book he might want kids, at least if the world was different! so even if katniss HAD picked gale in the end, you really think he wouldn't ever have tried to convince her they should have kids?? & just to be clear, i am NOT saying any of this from a shipping standpoint. this is absolutely not about ~peeta/katniss vs gale/katniss~ for me. i just hate the way people seem to misinterpret the epilogue in a way that puts peeta in such an awful light & paints katniss as a victim of his evil powers of coercion, or some shit like that 😂

- & finally, peeta is one of the best most well-written fictional characters of all time & if you disagree then you're wrong, simple as that 😌

i could write a whole ass essay on why mockingjay isn't that bad of a book & why the epilogue, while bittersweet, isn't actually the terrible, anti-feminist ending to katniss' story that every former hg fan is apparently convinced that it is. but i get the feeling that opinion wouldn't be too popular here on tumblr, so 🤷‍♀️